


Cheating the Future

by horselizard



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Consent Issues, Episode Related, F/M, Fix-It, Humiliation, Humor, Season/Series 08
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-03
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-12-23 08:33:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11986125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/horselizard/pseuds/horselizard
Summary: For Series VIII, Cassandra's actually a pretty good episode, isn't it? You know, apart from that one plot thread that's not only kind of rapey towards the show's only female character, but also pretttty inconsistent with previous characterisation, when it comes to certain people's attitudes towards sex...Here comes fix-it-fic to save the day. }:-)





	Cheating the Future

Rimmer stumbled down the corridors of the Silverberg in a numb daze. He couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. Just when he’d regretfully accepted that he couldn’t cheat the future, Cassandra told him _this_?

This was a nightmare. Worse than a nightmare; his worst nightmare, even. Not only was he going to _die_ , damn it, but he was going to have to spend his final hours – well, minutes, more like, but that only lengthened the horrible anticipation – utterly humiliating himself in front of a beautiful woman.

He clutched desperately at vague, unhelpful memories. Those girls at the Captain’s dinner… well, that was only a simulation, that didn’t count, surely? What did _real_ women like? Yvonne – what had Yvonne liked? Pizza, mostly. He groaned; the less he dwelt on that farce, the better. He’d sneaked a look at Lister’s Pop-Up Kama Sutra once; he didn’t think he was even flexible enough to get into those positions, let alone know what to do with Kochanski once he got there.

Kochanski – why _Kochanski_ , for smeg’s sake? She was miles, _leagues_ out of his, well, league! _And_ she was a superior officer! He was going to have to spend his last moments in the universe hideously failing to satisfy a beautiful, intelligent, well-bred superior officer. He groaned again. Being crushed to death under a crate of gazpacho soup would be a better way to go than this.

And why on Io would Kochanski want to do the horizontal shuffle with _him_ , of all people? The only way he could see that happening would be if it was some kind of cruel trick, or a bet. And since it was, somehow, going to happen, perhaps that was what it was. But… the thought surfaced like a hand above floodwater… was that really the sort of thing Kochanski would do? Would she really stoop to bonking a pathetic specimen like him just for laughs? It was about as likely as her genuinely taking a shine to him. He allowed himself to hope that maybe, just maybe, Cassandra had got it wrong.

He’d reached the door of the laundry room. He gulped, and staggered inside.

To his horror, he saw a mattress laid out on the floor, draped in rough blankets. “Wh- what’s that doing there?” he stammered.

“Oh, I found it in a corner. I thought if we’re going to be stuck down here for the foreseeable, we might as well make ourselves comfortable,” Kochanski replied, turning round from where she’d been inspecting a set of pipes. “Are you all right, Rimmer? You look awfully pale.”

“I… I went to see Cassandra,” he managed, terror edging his pitch skywards.

“Ohh,” she replied, concern entering her voice. “I suppose you asked her how… you know.” She could hardly say she liked the man, but nobody deserved to be put in a position like this. “Do you want to talk about it?” she said gently.

“She… she said Lister was… was going to shoot me,” he stuttered out, goggling eyes still glued to the mattress on the floor.

Kochanski’s eyes widened. “Why on Earth would Lister do _that_?” she exclaimed.

“D-don’t know,” Rimmer lied, fumbling for his flask. He didn’t know what the smeg was going on, but he was going to need something strong to deal with it.

“You mean she didn’t say anything else?” Kochanski asked. The poor thing was clearly shaken, and no wonder. She took a few steps towards him, determined to reassure him. “No way. He wouldn’t do that. She must have got it wrong.”

Rimmer glanced up at her as he realised she was coming closer, and met an intense, fiercely protective gaze. He looked around wildly, and his eye fell on an empty tumbler. “I think he might,” he squeaked, grabbing it and pouring a generous measure into it.

“Well...” Kochanski didn’t want to believe it herself. This situation was horrible and surreal enough as it was, being stuck in the bowels of a flooded spaceship with a dead man walking. What did you say to someone in that position? ‘So sorry for your impending loss’? “...Maybe she didn’t see the whole picture. Maybe it’s not what it looked like. Maybe it was… will be… to, um, put you out of your misery.”

Rimmer stared at her, her big blue eyes radiating concern. “Something like that,” he mumbled guiltily.

He really needed this drink, but he was terrible with neat spirits. There was an old tap set into a pipe in the wall, and he started twisting at it. Whisky and water, that would do it. The more he could dilute it, the quicker he could get it down.

Finally, the rusty old valve yielded to his tugging – but not in the manner he’d intended. The pipe snapped, the tap came away in his hand, and a spray of freezing cold water shot over him, drenching him from head to foot.

“Aargh!” he yelped, gasping with shock, as water continued to spurt with gusto from the broken pipe. He stared at it in panic, thinking of the rushing waters penning them in to the lower decks; he fumbled to try and dam the flow, but he was hampered by the glass in one hand and the snapped-off tap in the other. Stupidly, he tried to wedge the tap back onto the end of the pipe, only succeeding in firing the spray of water more wildly over himself. Finally he had the presence of mind to drop the tap and try to jam the pipe closed with the heel of his hand. At last, the torrent stopped. He looked up, dripping and breathless, to see Kochanski across the room with her hand on a valve.

“Got the right one at last,” she smiled apologetically. Rimmer looked down at his hand, slowly pulled it away from the pipe, and watched a forlorn dribble escape onto the floor.

He groaned as the shock of the cold finally cut through his panicked adrenaline, and felt himself starting to shiver. Just when he’d thought he only had _one_ unpleasant, humiliating experience left to undergo before he died. He ran his free hand through his sodden hair, and shook himself as rivulets of water trickled down his face.

“You poor thing,” Kochanski sighed as she walked over to him, “your clothes are soaking. Why don’t you take them off, and dry them on the heater?”

Rabbits in headlights would have been proud of the look he gave her. _It’s coming true_ , he thought, _it’s all coming true_.

He looked down at his glass of whisky. In true ironic fashion, barely a drop of the water had landed in it while he’d been losing his battle with the broken pipe. But desperate times called for desperate measures. Indeed, he could see himself calling for several more desperate measures in the near future, diluted or otherwise.

Kochanski had obligingly turned her back. He drained the glass with a shudder, and started to peel off his sopping wet clothes.

 

The whisky wasn’t helping. He still felt acutely conscious of every detail of his situation – from the rough scratch of the blankets against his bare skin to the subtle scent of Kochanski’s perfume drifting over from beside him. Not to mention how painfully vulnerable he felt. That had been the part he’d been rather hoping to take the edge off, to be honest.

Kochanski sat on the mattress hugging her knees, head cocked and lips quirked in a rueful smile as she looked across at Rimmer. He looked so tense he might snap, curled in on himself, white knuckles clutching the blanket protectively to his chest. He’d just about dried off by now, but his hair, rinsed free of gel and still slightly damp, was springing up in a chaotic mess of curls. The Rimmer Kochanski knew was a pompous, jumped-up lickspittle, but like this, he wasn’t so bad. Shame it took being close to death for him to drop his insufferable act; underneath it all, he was almost cute.

“D’you want another?” she said, reaching for the flask.

“Why not?” he sighed. There was, he reflected, still a chance that if he drank enough, he wouldn’t be able to get it up – and then all bets would be off, wouldn’t they? It failed to cross his mind that Kochanski was also keeping up with him, which might have rather the opposite effect.

Kochanski poured another measure, took a sip, and passed the glass to Rimmer. The poor sod deserved that much, at least. If she’d had a cigarette, she would have given him that, too.

“...Maybe it won’t be that bad,” she offered.

“Mm,” Rimmer grunted, sipping the whisky, and grimacing.

“It’ll probably be quick, at least.”

“Very probably, yes,” he groaned, as Kochanski took the glass from his unresisting hand, took another sip, and passed it back.

“You know… just one bang, and it’ll all be over.”

Rimmer gave her a look.

“I’m sorry,” she winced. She didn’t feel like she was doing very well at this. Maybe more whisky would help. “Would you like me to try and take your mind off it?”

Rimmer froze. “Wh- what do you mean?” he stuttered, hurriedly gulping some more of the whisky.

He almost managed to circumvent the whole problem by having a heart attack when she leaned over, and tried not to let his sigh of relief become audible when he realised she was just reaching for the glass. “I just mean talking,” she said. “About something else. About anything. What about… you tell me about your childhood?”

Rimmer sagged. This was getting worse and worse.

 

They were, against all probability, getting on just famously. Tales of dysfunctional childhood had spun on into tales of ineptly-rebellious young adulthood; Rimmer had been astonished to hear how even someone so seemingly-perfect also struggled with living up to expectations, while Kochanski had by turns been deeply moved and riotously amused by the scathing picture Rimmer painted of his family.

“And that’s when he decided he’d have to move to Titan,” Rimmer concluded, allowing himself the tiniest smirk at Kochanski’s howl of laughter.

“Good heavens, Rimmer,” she gasped, wiping tears from her eyes, and passing him the glass of whisky, “your family’s unbelievable. I mean...” she broke off.

“Were you going to say it explains a lot?” he asked wryly, taking a sip. “Most people do.”

He was feeling much better about the situation. They had whiled away vast amounts of pre-death time talking about the most utterly unsexy of things. Any shred of alluring mystique he might possibly have held for her had surely gone out of the window as he’d revealed the depths of his screwed-up-ness. And she was laughing, for heaven’s sake! She thought he was funny! There was no chance of a woman initiating anything with a man she thought was funny. That was why clowns never got any.

“No! I wasn’t going to say that,” she protested. She looked up at him, the corner of his mouth twisted in sardonic self-deprecation, a slight alcohol flush brightening his cheeks. He wasn’t clutching the blanket quite so tightly any more, and the view of his broad, bare shoulders was gradually being complemented by additional inches of his well-defined chest. He really wasn’t such a bad old stick, she thought. In fact, she was quite taken with the more vulnerable side he’d so candidly – and wittily – shown her. And the poor bastard was stuck down here, with her, waiting out the minutes until prediction dictated he would snuff it. Well. What the hell. Maybe she could make it a little easier for him.

“I wasn’t going to say that at all,” she said. A potent combination of alcohol, pity, and vague attraction was doing its work on her, and she let it. She reached out for the glass again, but this time, she didn’t take a sip from it; instead, she reached over Rimmer and put it on the floor, trapping him between her arms.

“I was going to say,” she breathed into his terrified face, “that you’ve come a hell of a long way.”

_What the hell?!_ thought Rimmer. _This isn’t how it’s supposed to happen!_ The full force of his earlier fears came back to hit him, potentiated by alcohol and adrenaline – it was _actually happening_ , it was happening _now_ – she was swinging her leg over him, pinning him to the mattress, pressing her lips to his – oh smeg, she was sneaking a hand under the blanket! He was too petrified to stop her, mouth too full of her strong slick tongue to cry out – he let out a muffled groan, but she took it precisely the wrong way, and started tugging at the blanket, exposing him to the press of her body…

The door burst open, revealing Lister, harpoon gun cocked and at the ready.

“Oh, thank god!” Rimmer exclaimed, collapsing back onto the mattress in a wave of overwhelming relief.


End file.
